Add to the Billion minutes of Bible reading this month

 internet  Tagged with: , ,
Jan 082011
 
YouVersion.com and its whole tribe of mobile apps is arguably currently the most widely-available digital Bible in existence on the planet. For this month of January, they’re rallying a campaign with a goal of 1 BILLION MINUTES of Bible reading. At the time of this writing, over 144 million minutes of Bible reading have happened, and the counter is running.

According to this ChristianToday.com article, Bible app users challenged to spend 1 billion minutes reading the Bible, the Billion Minutes challenge was announced on a November webcast.

My own Bible reading pace had it’s inconsistent hiccups. Currently, I’m using the OwnIt365 reading plan. I like the social networking dynamics weaved in with it.

Some random asides about this YouVersion Billion Minute challenge:

  • Shouldn’t the URL be youversion.com/1billion instead of youversion.com/billions ?
  • Is social media the only way to find out about this Bible reading challenge? I’ve seen a good bit of mention on blogs, Twitter, Facebook, even mainstream media. Could a banner button or link or something on the youversion.com home page add to the participation?
  • Do we have to read the Bible using a Youversion-related manner? Could our reading of a printed Bible or via email or via BibleGateway.com count towards the challenge goal?
  • If I left a web browser window open to YouVersion.com, will that count towards the goal? Or is it only counting Bible reading on mobile apps? Is it only counting verses that get displayed as the person is scrolling, or is would the clock keep ticking if I just left a screen on 1 Bible passage? Don’t want to game the system, but if it’s being gamed…
  • Would an embeddable Billion minute counter widget add to the viralness of this challenge? Is it okay for the challenge counter to be embedded on other websites?
  • Is there a way for someone to get a counter for their own Bible reading minutes? Someone might want to know how many minutes they’ve added to the overall Billion Minute challenge.
  • In our over-simplified focused fast communication world, it’s not as easy to get fuller context or details. Those would have probably answered most of my questions. If it’s already been blogged somewhere, a link to that on the challenge counter page would be good. So I thought I’d ask out loud in the open here. Maybe one of the YouVersion team people will stop by and answer. :) I don’t have to know, but I am curious.